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I cannot tell you how many times I have seen copies of Three O'Clock in the Morning Waltz by Paul Whiteman on the Victor label. I somehow have amassed three copies of this record, and I am not entirely sure how! Can someone tell me whether or not this was a popular record or if this was just a coincidence?

-Steve

It was a very popular record indeed. You will encounter many more copies in the years ahead!

George P.

The only Whiteman record I have seem more is "Whispering"/"Japanese Sandman" which sold over 2 million copies. I think I have owned half of them

Wang Wang Blues is the single Whiteman record I may have seen the most. Sure, Whispering sold tons, but there are several Whitemans (like Three O' Clock) that seem more frequent in my digging. Among electricals, Valencia and CONSTANTINOPLE are common - the latter, especially for the frequency of any Potato Heads one might find.

colmike1 wrote, "The only Whiteman record I have seem more is "Whispering"/"Japanese Sandman" which sold over 2 million copies."

Research by John Bolig into the original Victor Talking Machine Co. files shows actual sales of this title at 214,575… and that figure may include Whiteman's electrical remake. There have been a lot of unsubstantiated claims made over the years about record sales volumes before the Great Depression. The following article, Allan Sutton's "The 'Million Seller' Fallacy: A Reappraisal of 1920s Record Sales," does a pretty good job of debunking them:

https://web.archive.org/web/20060108013 ... lions.html

[Note: I had to resort to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine to access this article, likely because its author incorporated this material into his "Recording the 20s" book.]

As to the frequency with which Whiteman's version of "Three O'Clock in the Morning" turns up, I think a lot of collectors leave it behind simply because it is a waltz. Hence, it might seem more common than its sales numbers actually reflect. That's not to say it was not a good seller, however. I have turned it up many, many times myself. But here on the West Coast, I have turned up "Whispering"/"Japanese Sandman" exactly twice!

Best wishes, Mark

Three O'Clock in the Morning has seemed to be in every box I've looked through since I first became interested in 78s at the Salvation Army store in Rockville, Connecticut sometime around 1964(!). As someone else has reminisced recently on the Forum, they were a dime each or three for a quarter. Among my first purchases were, yep, Whispering and Three O'clock. I'm pretty sure the very idea of three o'clock in the morning seemed exotic and mysterious to me at the age of ten: what could possibly happen at three o'clock in the morning? That's when everybody's sleeping! But it actually is a rather sweet, romantic waltz, and I can see how it might have appealed to a great many people at the time.

Whispering's kind of an iconic piece for its moment, too -- that saw! To me, it sort of symbolizes the pop culture of the early 1920s, before the Charleston took over mid-decade.

Mark, thanks a lot for that link, looks very interesting! Heading over there now...

Interesting that you don't find Whispering much on the west coast. Here in New England, it really does seem to be everywhere. And I take your point about collectors leaving copies of these behind, but really, here they turn up just everywhere, including in lots at yard sales and estate shops, where they've not yet been picked over by collectors.

Oddly, I've always associated Whispering (for no good reason at all, except a vivid imagination) with the arising glamour of early Hollywood -- so it surprises me to know that it doesn't turn up that much out there. I can probably send you a few dozen copies, if you'd like...

Cody K wrote, "Whispering's kind of an iconic piece for its moment, too -- that saw!"

Not a saw, according to the contemporary literature referred to in this article

http://www.gracyk.com/whiteman.shtml

… but rather a "bosun's-pipe-slide-trombone-whistle instrument." I once saved from an Internet posting a period advertisement for this very instrument, but alas, I can't seem to discover what I filed it under. If I ever turned it up, I will post it here.

Warren Luce played it on "Whispering," according to this

http://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/m ... Whispering

http://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/t ... de_whistle

Thanks for the offer of sending me the extra copies of Whispering, but as much as I like the song, two copies is probably enough, given the space problems I have here.

As an aside, there was once thread on 78-L where people from all over the USA complained about records they turned up again and again and again. A surprisingly large number of them were records unknown to me, and I had been an active collector for 15 years before joining that listserv. It seems that, especially for pre-World War II records, what turns up a lot really depends on the part of the country where you are looking.

Best wishes, Mark

Not a saw, according to the contemporary literature referred to in this article…but rather a "bosun's-pipe-slide-trombone-whistle instrument."

Huh. And it took me only fifty years to find that out. Thanks for the link!

Thanks for the offer of sending me the extra copies of Whispering, but as much as I like the song, two copies is probably enough, given the space problems I have here.

Come, now. I'm in Rhode Island. You're in California. Rhode Island is tiny -- California is huge! Certainly there's more room for a few thousand extra copies of Whispering in California than here!

Wow this is interesting! I must admit that I have seen Whispering by Paul Whiteman quite a lot as well. Another record I have seen very often is Carry Me Back to Old Virginny.


-Steve